THE FOOL OF THE NILE

THE JEWEL OF THE NILE (1985)
dir: Lewis Teague

THE FOOL OF THE NILE
MAD #263, June 1986
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Sequel to Romancing the Stone, which was kind of Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Thin Man, or at least I imagine how that was pitched. Part of a group of films reviewed by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.

The other reels in the splash panel are plays on the titles Flashdance, Out of Africa, Spies Like Us, and Prizzi's Honor, The skunk was a character on their show in their segment Stinker of the Week. In the background is a portrait of William Gaines by Jack Davis that they used often.

While vacationing in France, Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is trying to write her next novel and her boyfriend Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) wants to continue their vacation of pleasure. She meets Omar Khalifa (Spiros Focàs) who wants her to come to Africa with him to write about him. His name here is a pun on Omar Sharif, who he slightly resembles. A jealous Jack follows them and Ralph (Danny Devito) shows up demanding the stone from the previous movie. Jack is informed that Omar is really a brutal dictator, bent on taking over Africa, who has the jewel of the title. In Africa, while Joan is looking around finding dirt on Omar she crashes through the roof af Al-Julhara, a holy man being held captive, who she finds out is 'The Jewel of the Nile'.

In the background are Benchley, Drucker's newspaper strip character and Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's secretary of defense.

The Siskel and Ebert stand-ins pretty much summarize the rest of the plot.

Actors often wrote in a few issues later about their portrayals, this time the screenwriters did.

The foreign editions of MAD often featured movies on their covers that weren't on the covers of the domestic edition, like this Australian cover, though usually it's an original painting and not taken from one of their panels.